Back into the light

Cataracts are responsible worldwide for nearly half of all cases of blindness. Alongside the bac-terial infection trachoma, it is the most common cause of sight loss in Ethiopia. Today cataracts can be treated in a routine operation. Yet in many African states there is a lack of medical staff: statistically one eye doctor in Africa is responsible for a million people, compared to around 13,000 in Germany. The great majority of Ethiopian eye doctors practise in Addis Ababa. That makes them unreachable for most people. The journey is too long, and transport, accom­modation in the city and the cost of treatment is too expensive.

Several times a year Menschen für Menschen therefore organises free operations. They are carried out by trained eye doctors like 43-year-old Fekadu Kassahun. He actually works in a hospital in the capital and travels nearly 600 kilometres to the Borena project area to carry out his mission. He will stay for a week and operate on up to 25 patients a day. Menschen für Menschen pays him, and the two nurses who travel with him, a daily rate, as well as covering the cost of lenses and the necessary medical materials, such as needles, cotton wool and disinfectants. The government and the hospital pay for transport and accommodation.

 

The charity also helped Zewude’s husband with the operation. “But when things finally went better for him, it started on me,” says Zewude. Although at the beginning she could still live at home, after a while she became almost completely blind and had to move in with her son Ali and his family. In spite of having got his sight back, her husband didn’t manage to take care of her on his own.

“We take care of everything,” reports Ali. While his wife gives her mother-in-law a hand with everyday things, washes and cooks for everyone, Ali tills his one-and-a-half-hectare field. The meagre harvest of wheat, Teff and beans has to do for his family of four and his parents. When he has to buy something, Ali works as a day labourer and earns between 1.5 and three euros a day. “The pressure weighs heavily on me,” admits the 38-year-old.

Through an invitation at the market he learned that the foundation was once again offering operations for cataracts. “I ran home at once and told my mother.” Together they took on the difficult journey to the proj­ect headquarters in Mekane Selam. “I’m frightened of the injections, but I want to see the treatment through,” says Zuwede. Like the other patients, she sits in front of the treatment room on a wooden bench, her hair tied out of her face with a plastic bag for the operation. “My husband and other people I know can see again. It must work for me as well,” she says confidently. A little later she is called.

The treatment only takes twenty minutes, as Fekadu removes the cataract in Zewude’s left eye and inserts an artificial lens. The next morning the eye bandage is already taken off and she can see again. “To see how happy people are at this moment gives me great joy,” says Fekadu. Three days later he will also operate on Zuwede’s other eye. Then there is a good chance that she will be able to fulfil her greatest wish: to go back to her husband and take care of herself independently.